Imagine yourself in a world where there is absolutely no treatment for any type of disease caused by bacteria, because of the rise of “superbugs” or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This could be the future we could be facing if we continue to over-use conventional antibiotics.
There is no doubt that one of the greatest achievements of the past century was the discovery of antibiotics. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections by killing bacteria or by inhibiting their growth. They do work very well; unfortunately, one major flaw in the current antibiotics is that they cause surviving bacteria to develop resistance. In other words, treatable infections becoming untreatable, due to over use of antibiotic treatments. Therefore, we should pursue a different approach when it comes to dealing with bacteria.
One such approach is to prevent bacteria from “talking” with each other in other words, preventing bacteria from using quorum sensing. Quorum sensing is how bacteria communicate with one another through chemical signals. Quorum sensing is particularly important for bacteria that cause disease (pathogenic bacteria). These bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate their “assault” on their host, and helps them escape from the response from their host’s immune system.
Bioluminescence, a process, that is achieved only with quorum sensing. From http://jb.asm.org
Here is a video of Dr. Bonnie Bassler, from Princeton University, explaining how bacteria “talk” to each other, and what the potential applications are towards controlling bacteria:
As explained by Dr. Bassler, the biggest application from manipulating quorum sensing is antibiotics. Since disease-causing bacteria use quorum sensing to “attack” their hosts, we could stop these bacteria from using quorum sensing, and therefore they will not cause their disease.
Is there any evidence of this approach actually working? According to a article, by Thomas Rasmussem, and Michael Givskov, they have identified some chemicals that are quorum sensing inhibitors. These chemicals were found to reduce the ability of bacteria to survive and cause disease. They also examined other ways on how to stop quorum sensing, such as preventing formation of quorum sensing molecules, and degrading quorum sensing molecules. Clearly, the results of the study show the potential of anti-quorum sensing chemicals. Hopefully, enough potential to remove the threat of bacteria once and for all.
– Dominic
